Archive for the Athletes Category

Or in this case Seven Hundred and Twelve reps, thats right our girl Crushed it. Words can’t really produce how I feel right now so I’ll leave it for another day.

Below is a thank you Roo posted this morning on Facebook thanking everyone for their support.

“First off, I can’t thank everyone enough for all of the support I/The Club had for this weekends event. It was so overwhelming every time I’d get on here and see all of the support. I can’t tell you how many times I teared up/cried because it meant so much to me that I had such a great community behind me! I really can’t thank everyone enough for all of the support they showed. Zach I can’t thank you enough for pushing me and being the best coach a girl could ask for and the best friend someone could ask for! Huge thanks to Old Country Iron Club for always supporting me in whatever I’m doing! Oregon Crossfit Coaches, CrossFit North Vancouver, Orange Kettlebell Club, CrossFit Affiliate Community,Yakima CrossFit thank you guys so much for the support! I’m truly blessed to be part of such a great community! Thank you all so much! Also a HUGE thanks to Skylar Pond at Excellence Chiropractic for always fixing my broken body and keeping me moving, as well as also being an awesome training partner/teammate! And of course big thanks to everyone atExcellence Health and Fitness for allowing us to use your facility for such a great event! Again I can’t thank everyone enough, and I know I’m forgetting people so I’m sorry if that is you! Oh haha of course I couldnt have done it without my family!!! Love you guys and thank you so much!!! I know I keep saying it but I really couldn’t have done it without such an AMAZING support crew!!!!!!!!! ♥”

Well said girl, if you missed the weekends event I/C athlete Jacob Stone was on site taking picture and put this picture video together from Saturday. Thanks my friend.

We are on our final Count down to this weekends One Hour Long Cycle Charity Event.

Over 40+ members of the I/C will be taking part in Relays as we support one or our own in her quest to break a Record. Countless hours of Training have been place into a very important time span of 60 minutes on Saturday.

B is the I/C’s youngest Comp Team member. He’s also had his fair share of cool nicknames since he started up with the Club.

The Kid. Our little Member.. The GentleMan Kid…

I mean the list could go on and on and then one just stuck the other day.

Now before I jump the Shark so to say and drop the name lets get to the root of why I even decided to post about this today. You see on our Training Log we have a day of friendly banter called Topic Thursday. It’s usually a subject, training or movies you know some kinda bullshit to talk about. Then sometimes it’s a funny picture.

Well today I made the mistake of posting a picture of “The People’s Champion” Skylar Pond. Well no one has anything bad to say about “The People’s Champion” Skylar Pond so the board was pretty blank.

And then this afternoon I received a message that had to do with Skylar’s pic but was directed at B (nothin better then Creative shit talk). It was from Jim (Gym as we know him in the Club, nicknames are key), and Jim is quite the wordsmith. Being from New York when Jim decided to engage in verbal jousting he’s hard to one up. In fact with B having no knowledge of Jim knowing his new nickname he strolled up to him Wednesday and was met with the following statement.

“So I heard your leading a field trip to the Great Beyond…”

That was the set up for the picture he sent me today, the man is on fire folks.

Nothing really, well nothing that I really realize (foreshadowing). I always choose to put work first. I feel that hard work is a gift of mine.

Don’t need an intense social life. Don’t need fancy things. Don’t need much of anything that isn’t in line with my goals. And my goals are my own, no one else needs to understand them. I work 7 days a week and I choose to do so. I choose to because as I said I have goals. I also have other people depending on me to meet their goals.

I’m sure everyones has seen this video before.

Man do I think about that speech a lot. I think about how hard it is to achieve what you really want in life and the trails and tribulations that come with it.

Goals are set for reasons. Dreams are dreams for reasons. If shit was easy everyone would alway get exactly what they wanted. Everyone wants to get to the mountain top but no body wants to walk the journey to get there. Cause its hard and sometimes its very lonely.

“What has “suffered” because of this?”

Remember I said that earlier in this article. Well a lot has. A lot has suffered and been sacrificed for me to try and stay on my path. Maybe thats not a good thing.

I’m a worker. I’ll work. I’ll work before eating, before sleeping before taking care of myself.

Now I see something suffering. If I have a talent to work hard I shouldn’t abuse it. I shouldn’t expect to work from 5:45 in the morning til 1 oclock in the after noon NOT eat and have a successful training session an hour later. And what do I do after that training session? I start my evening work schedule that goes sometimes past 8pm without eating again. Getting by on coffee and muscle milk samples is just bad living when your not only trying to Coach athletes but lead by example.

I’m up late every night working on the week days and even later on the weekends. My sleep bank is at an all time low and thats saying a lot for even me (my family has a history of insomnia). If someone was receiving coaching advice from me and working like this I would have stepped in awhile ago. I would have told them they needed to get some shit sorted out.

But, am I on the path to achieve my goals.

Yes.

All of them.

No.

Are people Depending on me for ALL of them.

Yes.

It’s quite the double edge sword sometimes and it’s one I have choose to use. Trying to find the balancing act as of late has really started to weigh on me. Coaching couldn’t be going better, everyone one who I coach is right where I want them in their current period of training. My own personally training is turning out great results as well. But I’ve walked this line before and I’m flirting with wearing myself thin.

The biggest thing is I spotted it early. I usually don’t, I actually worked myself into pneumonia last year and then had to keep the ship on course during the whole thing. It was not a fun experience.

So how do you work like you want to breath but avoid a total burnout.

Discipline

I always tell myself I’m to busy for this or that. I dont have time for things. I like to make the exuse that I dont have enough minutes in the day to just get a hold of my own Chaos sometimes.

If you want to realize your goals you have to do the things that will make them happen. The video I have posted below sparked this whole post today. It’s about a day in the life of professional bodybuilder Kai Greene. I first saw this blazed with the word Discipline over on OPT’s site.It’s probably one of the best pieces I’ve watched in sometime. If you want to be a hater on bodybuilding then find a different blog to read. Kai’s approach to his training and discipline in his day to day life if pretty inspiring.

After having watched the series I took a lot in personally. I need to find the time in my life for more structure. Yes, I have a steel discipline when it come to work. I always have, I always will. I’m on a course I plan to follow.

But the discipline to take care of myself is something I need to address. Some day the other foot will drop if I continue to burn the candle at both ends. If I want to be both the Coach and Athlete I desire to be then I need to refine the discipline I have to march all day and apply it to other areas of my life.

Todays word is Discipline folks, there is time in the day if you make it.

Roo achieved her Master of Sport ranking in the 20kg Long Cycle at last Novembers IKFF Nationals in Detroit. It was Roo’s second outing in Kettlebell Sport and she reached the Highest Rank she could with with her Bell weight.

What do you do next?

Well the next logical Idea would be to go for her MSIC (Master of Sport International Class) which is the absolute highest rank you could achieve. Roo had a talk with Big John Buckley after that Competition that would change her whole train of thought as to her next goal. You see Roo is an awesome Kettlebeller, but she isn’t solely a Kettlebell Athlete. No she also quite the established Crossfit athlete.

John’s advice to her was very different than simply,“go up a Bell weight and get that Rank.”

No he told her since she didnt train Kettles all that often it wouldnt be smart for her to get after a heavier bell without diverting more of her training to kettles. And since Roo trains so diversely what he said was simply:

“Just get really good with your weight and break a record.” (Well it wasn’t quite that. But it was something along those lines, we were all in full Stage 5 at that point at the hotel bar he pretty much said get really good with your Bell and Fuck shit up.)

So Roo went through a whole Crossfit season training business as usual. Then during this last Season I received a book. The book was from my Coach Jeff Martone. He had written a Kettlebell manual and wanted me to write a review for it. While reading it I came across a write up on Kettlebell marathon Sport that mentioned a lifter I had met from Australia while I was in Russia the year before. It listed a world record she had set in the one hour kettlebell Jerk.

The Bell weighed 35 pounds and she had jerked it 546 times in an hour.

Well now I thought…

Lighter Bell, maybe not exactly what John was talking about, but I figured why not.

“Hey Roo wanna try and Break a World Record?”

And now here we are it’s been a long road.

Let’s go to the Marathon Championships to Break it… Wait they’re in Italy

Let’s uhhhhh… Shit let me ask John if it’s cool if we do something similar.

What’s this? You guys would like to hold your Annual One Hour Long Cycle fundraiser in Seattle? Fucking Sweeeeet, you would like help planning it? Even better. Hey, Let’s have a Relay option this year so people new to Long Cycle (Kettlebell Clean and Jerk if your on the site please try and keep up) can participate too. As you can tell you guys are getting the fast forward model of this particular project.

BOOM!!!!

We are holding the Orange KettleBell Club One Hour Long Cycle charity event this year in Seattle. We will have a Relay Option and Our VERY own Marissa “Roo” Luchau will be taking a run at the One Hour Kettlebell Jerk World Record.

We have assembled at least 1o Relay Teams for the Event comprising of 3 to 5 people and countless other individuals will be showing to support that day.

So how do you Register?

You don’t, you simply donate at least 25 Dollars to the cause and show up to lift. Since this is the first year we are organizing Teams for the event we are keeping it nice and simple for everyone. You don’t have to create an account to donate. Just simply click on the below link.

That link will take you to the “Team Marissa” fundraiser page. This is where we are collecting all of the Relay Team Donations. Simply donate 25 Dollars if you will be competing on a Relay then send me a confirmation email at oldcountrystrong@gmail.com.

Let’s show everyone how the I/C can unite for a cause guys. Lets show everyone when one of ours is going swinging for the fences we stand with her.